Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss was featured in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 Fiction Issue. Her story will appear in the June 28, 2010 issue.

When were you born?

August 18, 1974.

Where?

New York, New York.

Where do you live now?

Brooklyn, New York.

What was the first piece of fiction you read that had an impact on you?

I honestly don’t remember. From the beginning I read obsessively, and it almost didn’t matter what.

How long did it take you to write your first book?

A year.

Did you ever consider not becoming a writer?

Of course, though mostly out of practicality or anxiety, or a combination of both, rather than out of any real desire to do something else.

What, in your opinion, makes a piece of fiction work?

Its ability to remind us of ourselves, of who we are in our essence, and at the same instant to deliver a revelation.

What was the inspiration for the piece included in the “20 Under 40” series?

It’s an excerpt from a novel, “Great House,” that will be published in October. There are four voices in the book; the one in this piece belongs to a writer, Nadia, who is addressing a judge, or at least someone she calls “Your Honor.” For years, I’d imagined writing a novel based on one of my favorite films, “Three Colors: Red,” by Krzysztof Kieślowski. In it, there is a retired judge who taps his neighbors’ phones in order to eavesdrop on their conversations. Though I never wrote that book, I couldn’t shake the idea of a fallen judge who has willfully put himself or herself in a morally compromised position. Sometime later, I read “The Fall,” by Camus, which Kieślowski must have been thinking about very much when he wrote “Red.” It’s about a brilliant French judge, a despicable and cruel person, who, crossing a bridge in Paris one day, passes a woman leaning over the edge and looking mournfully down at the Seine. A few moments later, he hears a cry and a splash behind him. He continues on his way—he doesn’t turn back to help the girl or try to save her—and the next day he reads about her suicide in the newspaper. His guilty torment, and his undoing, begin there. By that time, I had already begun to write the story of a fallen judge, but soon it became the story of a fallen writer, if one can call her that, addressing a judge—the writer and the judge, at least in this story, being two sides of the same coin.

Around that time, I went to a dinner party at a friend’s house. There was a painting on the wall, just like the one described in the story. It made a strong impression on me, and before I left I asked my friend who had painted it. He told me that his best friend and the friend’s sister had painted it together at the ages of nine and eleven, and that soon afterward their mother had put sleeping pills in their tea, driven them out to the forest, and set the car on fire with all of them in it. At that time, I already had a child of my own and was pregnant with another, and I became haunted by this story, those children, and what would have driven that mother to do what she did. The beautiful painting the children painted stayed with me. And the story of guilt—the crime of that mother, the guilt of a writer who uses that story in her own, and the fallen judge—became wrapped up together in my mind and my work.